Sycamore Canyon

Sunday a group of us hiked part of the way down Sycamore Canyon. It's a hike I've been hoping to do for quite a while - it's supposed to be really beautiful (it was), and because the turnaround point is at the Mexican border. There's something fascinating and oddly funny about the turnaround point of a hike being a barbed wire fence that marks an international border.

The window of good opportunity to do this hike is fairly small, because it's pretty much guaranteed to be a wet hike, with high probability of having to swim across pools at some narrow points in the canyon. For that reason, we didn't want to do it over the winter or early spring when it was cool out because we'd be freezing with wet clothes, but it is still at fairly low elevations fairly far south, so it wouldn't be a good idea in the hottest part of the summer either.
The canyon was really pretty, and very green compared to most of southern Arizona, with lots of pretty wild flowers.

Sycamore Canyon is reputed to be one of few places in Arizona with water all year round, and it was certainly true, as evidence by the small fish in several of the pools!


We didn't actually make it all the way to the border, sadly. We didn't get started on the actual hike as early as we would have liked thanks to taking a wrong turn at an unmarked fork in the trail right at the beginning, and progress on a lot of the hike is slow thanks to all the water. Most of the water can be avoided if you're a decent rock climber, agile, and a bit lucky (unlike Slim, below). There are several places where you can climb over rocks or shimmy along a rock face, or you could just jump in the pool and swim across, but with some of us carrying cameras and/or phones, that wasn't going to work. We could have still gotten through the 10 miles (roundtrip) before dark, but a few people had plans back in town that they wanted to get back for, too (lame).

Joel intentionally taking the water route...

Slim unintentionally taking the water route...

We will most definitely try this hike again, without cameras or phones in tow, because it will definitely be a lot faster and easier if we can just jump in and swim. I want to hike to Mexico!